Why Entrusting Your Ad Account To A Facebook Ads Agency Is A BAD Idea.

Key Takeaways

hey guys this is savannah sanchez from the social savannah today i'm going to be talking about a topic that's been on my mind for a while now and this is why a freelancer is better for your business than working with an ad agency when i'm saying ad agency i'm referring to your facebook media buying agencies google media buying agencies any agency that's going to take over your media buying and ad creatives since most of my clients that come to me to work with me as a freelancer have pretty much all came to me from an agency and i've heard the same story over and over again that they weren't getting the results that they wanted the communication was poor the expertise wasn't there they were just so over agencies they've even tried a few agencies and they've just been burned they never want to work in the agency again so i want to talk to you about their experience but also i have an interesting perspective because i came from an agency i worked in an agency for two years as a media buyer and then i was promoted to a manager to manage the facebook and snapchat media buying teams so i know the agency model i left the agency because i didn't believe that model best served clients i don't believe the agency model works i don't believe that growing e-commerce brands benefit from going to an agency and are much better off hiring someone directly whether as a freelancer or even someone in-house or just working with an expert in that field directly instead of going to an agency is always better off for the client so let me back up some of those claims now the number one thing that i think is why an agency will never be as good as hiring an expert like myself is because the incentives aren't aligned so what i mean by that when you're working with a media buyer you obviously want them to perform for your business you want them to care you want them to be alert 24 7 and what's going on in your ad account you want them to be trying new things testing new strategies always thinking about how to improve the incentives need to be there for that person to put in the time and energy to care about growing your business that should be what you are looking for in a media buyer whether you're looking to hire in-house work with a freelancer like me or go to an agency you're looking for someone to care so when you go to an agency first things first from my own experience working at an agency you're never really assigned a team they tell you have a team they'll show you their office with a bunch of people in it but ultimately you're working with one media buyer that's your go-to person they're gonna be the person on your account it's not that there's like 20 people in a room all strategizing about how to make your account better the reality is you will be assigned one media buyer who that media buyer is you'll never know when the sales process you'll speak to the sales team at the agency you'll see all the case studies of all the amazing things that this agency has done who you actually get assigned to when you sign the contract you'll you'll never know until you sign up which is kind of scary this person often can be a recent college grad maybe they'd have started last week i thought it sounds bad but i've you can go to the linkedin of the person who is now on your account as a media buyer and you can see like oh they graduated three months ago and this is their first real job great i trust them so this is real this happens all the time i'm not just saying this to talk bad about anybody of course there's great media buyers at agencies but most of the time these are novice media buyers on your account so put that aside you get to sign your media buyer are the incentives aligned they literally can't be the way the agency model works is that any given media buyer gets assigned 10 to 15 ad accounts to manage at a time which is an insane workload i used to be a media buyer agency i've never been more burned out in my entire life like you can't even think straight because you have so many priorities so much work talk to any media buyer at agency and you will hear the same story of burnouts they overload you with clients you're also not paid very well as a media buyer agency the average media buyer salary at an agency is around sixty thousand dollars so in comparison to what a freelancer makes an agency media buyer makes a fraction of that literally because let's talk about the agency model and why the incentives aren't aligned so when you're paying an agency let's just say you're doing facebook media buying as a service and they charge 5k a month for media buying i'm just using averages of what the market is let's just say you're spending 50 000 on ads per month they charge 10 to spend there you go you have 5k retainer each media buyer is managing 10 to 15 accounts at a time so that one media buyer is generating 50 000 plus worth of revenue for the agency each month yet that agency media buyer is only getting paid 50 to 60 grand a year so they're just making a fraction of the revenue that they bring in which and the media buyer knows this like they're kind of demotivated by this which is why great media buyers like myself like so many other agency media buyers i know have said hey i'm just gonna do this on my own like i can make way more money i don't have to use an agency where they're taking the lion's share and i'm just getting a sliver yet doing all the work so because i would say they're not getting paid enough relative to what a freelancer would make if they just took on five clients of their own who and each one was paying 5k that is such a huge difference than making a 50k a year so there and that kind of goes back to my first point about who was going to be your media buyer the good media buyers are either going to go off to do their own thing like myself they're either going to work at a brand and get paid a lot more media buyers who work directly at brands can get paid 150k plus a year i know this because i have a lot of media buyer friends who went from agencies and now they're the director paid social working with one brand only making three times as much so you do have a lot of novice low-level media virus agencies and it's a constant charm like when i worked at the agency you wouldn't have a media buyer on one account for more than three to six months either number one they're leaving they're ready to go off on their own like i did and start their own business or get a higher paying job at a brand or another scenario that happens is that they get promoted the good media buyers don't want to stay on 15 accounts at a time that is just it's it's kind of it's it's a it's a train i there's no other way to say i've been there before if you are managing 10 to 15 ad accounts at a time and you are not getting paid fairly for that work you're working your nights your weekends you're so burned out so good media buyers don't want to live that lifestyle for very long i know i didn't after about six months of being a media buyer i was promoted to a manager which is a much less stressful job i was just able to hire media buyers train them on my processes so good media buyers get promoted which also brings me back to my point all of those case studies that you see about the agency you're working with those are the good media buyers who achieved those results but those good media buyers are now promoted to manager or director they don't want to stay like in the grind of working 15 ad accounts at a time so the directors at this at this agency and the higher level people even the owners of the agency i have no doubt that they have really great media buying experience and are experts in e-commerce i really don't doubt that when you're in the sales process and you're talking to the top managers at this company and they're trying to sell you on your agency they're gonna know their stuff because they they got to this point by having some people who knew what they were doing they were promoted to managers and now it's just about hiring more lower level media buyers my point is that the person on your account isn't going to be that high level director that got all of the great sales and all the great case studies are about they've either gone and left to do their own thing they're not even working there anymore or they're just a manager they're they're kind of overseeing the operation they're growing the business they're not in the grind anymore so who was on your account that's the mystery and that's the scary part they're typically very novice low level media buyers who are just drained they're burned out the churn of media buyers and agency the average length of employment for a media buyer is less than a year and that's because of burnout they the life of a media buying a media buyer at an agency is so rough you are burned out so quickly so even if you do get a great media buyer on your account the chance of them leaving is very high most people don't have the same media buyer on their account for more than six months because they're moving to different parts of the company they're leaving to another great job they're getting burned out they're leaving all together so the the turnover is super high you'll probably if you are at agency for a year end up working with two or three different media buyers with varying levels of experience and i'm always saying this because i've been there i've worked at agency i understand the model it's about getting as many clients in the door as possible and assigning as many clients at a time per media buyer that's an agency makes money if i can give 10 or 15 clients to a media buyer and that media buyer makes 60k a year each client is paying 5k that agency is making a lot of money so where's a lot of money going that's going to the director roles it's going to the ceos that's going to the partners there's all these higher level people who you personally as a client will never interact with they'll never be on your account but your retainer money has to go to the full system people who have nothing to do with your account have never touched your account even though don't even know your account exists they got to pay everyone's salaries from the higher ups also pay for the fancy office pay for the company retreats pay for health care for all the employees meanwhile you're just working with one singular media buyer and i already talked to you about who knows what type of experience they have plus do they even have the time to give your the care to your account that is the other factor when you're working on 10 or 15 accounts at a time even if you are great and you do care you only have so much time in a day as a media buyer at an agency to give each account enough attention so typically how this goes an agency is after three months clients leave they stay for three months at most they realize that this sucks and they end up finding another solution whether going to different agency or finding a freelancer or hiring someone in house the average client length is really short at agencies so what the business model is is how can we get clients in as fast as possible and replace the ones that are leaving some people may call this a churn and burn system so as a media buyer if you're working at an agency you get accustomed to this of working on new clients at a time clients being over promised in the sales process of things that maybe the media buyer can't even deliver on realistically like if the media like in the sales process they are promised a 5x row us by the sales team because the sales team just wants to bring in a client once it's handed off to a media buyer they know that they can't get more than a 2x now the client's pissed clients already paid the contract these are things that happen all the time at agencies they're used to clients coming in and out how quick how can we sell the client to come in how can we replace the next one that's leaving that is the business model which of course is not good for the client this is why i left the agency life because i saw this happening i saw the churn and burn i saw the burnout of media buyers and i just saw that all of the extra money was just going to the office all the higher higher level people like you don't actually get what you pay for at the end of the day like you're paying for this one media buyer's salary yes but you're also paying for everything all the sales team the whole system behind it is all baked into your retainer so let me contrast this with working with me so as a freelancer i get a hundred percent of the pay which is awesome i mean of course i pay for my home office and my own medical expenses but i get to keep the rewards of my effort and if i'm charging let's just say 10 of ad spend for a client i am incredibly motivated to scale that account if they're spending 30k right now and i know that if i put an effort to get them to spend 100k a month my direct take-home pay is gonna triple or quadruple based purely off my efforts whereas if i was an agency i'm on a salary i don't care if the client leaves i don't care if the client comes i don't care if they scale i don't care if they fail i'm getting my paycheck every month but as a freelancer my pay is directly based off of how well my clients are performing also i can only work with a few clients at a time i am completely aware of my limitations that i cannot work with 10 or 15 clients on my own and i have to be selective of who i take on so if i'm only working with a handful of clients at a time each client is extremely important to me because i can make up a large percentage of my salary if i lose one client that it could be devastating to my pay so i'm extremely motivated to keep the clients that i have when i bring on a client i want to make sure the expectations are reasonable i think there's an opportunity that i can improve the account after the audit and that i can actually spend a lot of time with this business and grow this business i'm really lucky that since i started as a freelancer about eight months ago a lot of the clients that i first got when i first started pretty much all of them are still my clients i only have one client that has quit during covid and it was because they sold luxury handbrags and it just wasn't the right market for covid but i'm so lucky that i don't have any turnover with my clients and i think it's because not only am i getting the results they see that i care i'm incentivized to care like this is my my me growing my own business as a freelancer is directly correlated with my clients seeing success i'm doing good work for them and they're going to stay with me and they're going to want to work with me for the long term those are the type of clients i want to bring on long-term partners where i can take over their entire paid social strategy work directly with entrepreneur avoid burnout because i'm working for myself i don't have to go to any pointless agency meetings and i can 100 get the fruit of my efforts what's also great with working with me or any other freelancer is that i have to make my own name for myself and that is based off of referrals number one that's my number one place that i get new clients is existing clients referring me to their friends in the community so i'm so motivated to do good work for my clients i i can't operate off of the churn and burn agency model because i have my name attached to it the word will get around that savannah sucks and i don't want that word to get around i want to do great work for my clients so that is extremely important to me is keeping my good name also i can't rely off of an agency name to boost me up you know like at an agency like i said they have the case studies they have the fancy whatever facebook case studies about all their great accomplishments but that media buyer you're working with wasn't the person that did the case studies or did those great accomplishments for me when people want to hire me and work with me i can only talk about the accounts that i've managed what success have i done what brands have i personally worked with what budgets have i worked with not an agency because it doesn't matter what agency if an agency has a case study that's not the person who's on your account when you're working with me you're vetting my expertise because i'm the one you're talking to every day i'm the one pulling the buttons i'm pushing the levers so if that's important to you to have someone with a lot of expertise on your account hire the expert or freelancer directly like myself and like i said keeping the incentives aligned is the most important you want to make sure that whoever is on your account is incentivized to keep you as a client to scale you to see you have success and that's exactly how i am with my clients the incentives are 100 aligned to see them succeed so if you agree with me if you don't agree with me leave in the 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